Go home Be Careful What You Wish For chapter 4 by witeja9199

Kirsten learns three things on the night bus home. Men take up space the way gases do, without noticing. Her new knees have opinions about the seat, and none of them are polite. And the man opposite is looking at Mazzaroth the way people look at a menu they've no intention of paying for.

"Stop crossing your legs," Kirsten mutters. "You're attracting attention."

"I'm managing attention," says Mazzaroth, who is. "Also, this skirt does not permit another posture. It's a very committed skirt."

Her flat is above a kebab shop, so it smells permanently of someone else's dinner. Dennis, the one-eared cat, takes one look at six foot three of unfamiliar aftershave and hisses. Then he climbs into Kirsten's lap anyway, because it is a lap of undeniable quality, and starts kneading.

"Traitor," says Kirsten.

"Cats are the only creatures who can sense wealth," says Mazzaroth. "They've been in on the whole thing since Egypt."

Kirsten puts the lamp, still disguised as a folder marked Q3 Reconciliations, on the coffee table, and sits in the dark with her hands on her knees. Then she says, in a very small baritone, "I need the loo."

"Ah."

"How does it work?"

"Mechanically."

"Mazzaroth."

"Aim," says the genie, and then, kindly, "and don't look down. Everyone looks down. It's like being handed a live fish."

Five minutes later, Kirsten is in her apartment bathroom, staring at a stranger in the mirror. He is a distinguished man in the way a good cheese is distinguished: silver at the temples, wide through the shoulders, with forearms that suggest a squash habit. She undoes the second button of the shirt, and a rug of grey chest hair stares back at her like a small, disapproving animal.

"There's a forest," she calls through the door. "I didn't plant it!"

"It comes with the template."

"And the, um." She looks down, which she's been told not to do, and looks up again fast. "It's moving."

"It's not you, it's Aldous. He hasn't been touched in years. Do you know he keeps a photograph of Brenda's lanyard?"

"I don't want to know that!"

"Well, now you do. That's what I'm here for."

She comes out of the bathroom with her shirt buttoned to the chin. Mazzaroth is on the sofa, shoes off, one leg tucked beneath her. Something unfamiliar in Kirsten stirs and starts doing a little sitting-up of its own, and she backs into a bookcase.

"Don't," says Mazzaroth gently, without looking. "It's a male body. It sees a woman on a sofa and starts reading a newspaper in its head. I wouldn't take it personally."

"I'm taking it very personally." Kirsten drops into the armchair, and Dennis immediately reoccupies her. "Right. I've thought about this. You can undo it."

"I can't."

"You haven't heard the argument."

"I've heard it eleven thousand times. It begins with 'surely' and ends with 'just this once.'"

"Surely," says Kirsten, "just this once, you could give me a refund. A courtesy reversal. One sex change, barely used."

"It's not a sex change, it's a Schedule Nine Personal Alteration with an Anchor Clause—"

"I only wished for a disguise. I didn't wish for a tie."

"And I only granted what you wished. Look." Mazzaroth sits up, and her tone turns almost sympathetic. "Wishes aren't a contract with me. They're a contract with the universe, and the universe doesn't do customer service. It has one of those telephone systems. Press one if you'd like to speak to a different wish."

"Store credit, then."

"Store credit is a wish."

"An exchange."

"An exchange is also a wish. Everything is a wish. That's rather the point of wishes."

Kirsten sags. "I have two left."

"Two. Which you've been very clever about not wasting, and I'm quite proud, in a way I shouldn't be allowed to say." Mazzaroth hesitates. "I will say this. If you spend one on changing back, you're left with one. One wish to fix the Performance Improvement Review, the Gareth thing, the photocopier, and your life."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you're Aldous Crake at ten tomorrow." Mazzaroth tilts her head. "Which has its advantages. He could fire Brenda."

"I don't want to fire Brenda!"

"Interesting. I'd have thought you'd..."

"I'd have thought so too," says Kirsten slowly.

She stops. Something is wrong with the room. It takes a moment to identify, and then she realises she is sitting with her knees apart, one arm along the back of the chair, and an opinion of the sofa upholstery she has never had before. Cheap, the opinion says. Should've gone with the Danish.

"Mazzaroth. Is it..."

"Starting? Yes. I did say."

"I just thought about dovetail joints."

"That's usually the first sign."

The doorbell rings.

Both of them freeze. It's twenty to eleven on a Tuesday night, and the only person who ever rings Kirsten's bell at this hour is the kebab shop's delivery boy, who has the wrong address on a standing basis. She pads to the peephole, fish-eyed and distorted.

Brenda from HR stands on the landing in a belted mac, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a bound file in the other. She is smiling. Nobody has ever seen her smile. It transforms her face the way a crack transforms a windscreen.

"Oh no," breathes Kirsten.

"Is that—"

"HR has everyone's address. It's the one thing they're efficient at." She turns, wild-eyed. "She's smiling, Mazzaroth. At something with a pulse!"

"Well, you do have a very good pulse now."

On the other side of the door, Brenda's voice drifts through, low and warm: "Aldous? I saw your car outside."